I have some news about the next update. I'm trying to finish an update to RWFF right now, but I've also been trying a few experiments to try to speed up VR Sportfishing to get it to run more smoothly, or possibly allow people to increase their detail settings without slowing down. Making it run faster will also enable it to handle higher concentrations of fish, and then we can have those big schools of crappies and walleyes we'd like to see.

I've made some changes to improve the efficiency of cull things by field of view. That is, the less time the game spends thinking about or drawing things that won't be visible in your current view, the faster it runs. I'm also adding another piece of control over the landscape textures. Right now most lakes use 10 layers of textures (3 kinds of grass, stones, pebbles, mud, sand, cliffs, etc.) I'm working on an option that will reduce it to 3 or 4. If your computer can handle all 10 it won't change anything. But if it runs a bit slowly for you, dropping it down to fewer layers can also boost performance. In my tests so far combining those two options doubles the frame rate without much loss of graphics quality. I have a few other ideas for boosting performance that I'll be testing once this RWFF update is finished.

I've also been giving a lot of thought about how to support custom lakes. I think we'll all have some fun swapping lakes once we've got the tools to do it.

Sounds great.....Thanks Paul...Having a blast with this game. Havent tried the walleye tourney yet as i'm still learning the best lures to use with them and also the "hot spots"..I did try a bass tourney however, and came in 2nd place..

I'd like the lake editor to be a simple as possible, with room for getting more complicated if you like. The biggest job will be creating a heightfield bitmap. That's basically a map image that represents the altitude of each point, with black at the lowest points (the deepest spots in the lake) and white at the highest (the tallest peaks of the hills or mountains.) You can just use a simple image editor and draw your favorite lake, or if you want more realistic slopes and valleys there's a program out there that can generate very life-like heightfields for you. You can pick the overall layout and let it take care of making the little details life-like. There will be configuration files to edit where you'll say how many of each species of fish you want, size ranges, etc. I'll get into the specifics more when I get further into it, but I hope to make it pretty easy to add your own lakes.

RWFF update was just updated so i would think that he's working on the update for VR sportfishing. I've gotta say that I've had a blast with this game. I played trophy bass 2007 only to go back to this game. This is much better - much more realistic. And, Much more fun... Thanks again Paul for all you've done.

A lake creator would be great! A feature I would like to see added is vertical timber in the lakes, and trees at the shoreline, for that shade factor. Fish love shade. Fisherman love fish. The perfect match. There was an old fishing game, Bass Tournament(Not that tycoon one, an old dos strategic top-down game), that had a lake editor. I made all my fav lakes. Keep going on this one Paul. You've got a great game here!

You're correct - I'm working on the VRS update. Schooling fish are coming along nicely. Now I'm working on showing the full-screen map in a way that shows depth. And getting the guide to highlight some specific spots on the lake map for the species you're after will be a nice enhancement too. I'm hoping to finish this update this week.